Powers:Death's Head has a number of different powers. These include, but are not limited to: great strength, detachable limbs and near invulnerability. His limbs, when detached, are still connected to his cerebral cortex, allowing him some degree of control over them.

He also displays great prowess with a number of different weapons. His left hand is specifically designed to be removed, to allow "slot fitting" of most weapons. Additionally, he can fly for brief periods of time due to jets in his feet.

Bio:Death's Head was essentially a cyborg bounty hunter, who is not overly fond of that description of his existence. He is more inclined to call himself a "freelance peacekeeping agent".

For a character with a relatively low number of total appearances — easily less than 100 — he has an extraordinarily complex history.

This is because he sits in the middle of three otherwise discrete Marvel Universes: Transformers-Earth, Doctor Who-Earth and mainstream/mainstream UK-Earth.

Though ultimately a part of the "normal" Marvel universe, it is all but impossible to speak of the character without mentioning the Transformers and the Seventh Doctor. Indeed, his presence pulls both of these licensed properties into the regular Marvel universe, if only briefly and somewhat negligibly.

It should be pointed out that although the character hasn't significantly appeared in comics for over 20 years, recent interest in the character in the mainstream Marvel (US) market may actually lead to further developments in the chaacter's history. Simon Furman, the character's creator, has expressed an interest in writing a follow-up to his 21st-century re-imagining —Death's Head (03) — in which an explicit and significant link between the third version and the first will be given.

Notes:Trying to determine the first appearance of this character is problematic. The official party line from Marvel is that he first appeared in a one-page strip called "High Noon Tex". This apparently appeared for the first time on the back of most September, 1988 issues of Marvel UK titles. The apparent reason for Marvel's insistence on this point is that it establishes the character to have existed prior to his initial use in The Transformers. If true, that would make him a Marvel character who crossed into the Transformers' universe.

However, the truth of the matter seems to be that he had no fewer than five appearances prior to September 1988 — four in The Transformers and a later one in Doctor Who Magazine.

We know September 1988 to be a definite appearance of "High Noon Tex" because of visual inspection of Dragon's Claws #3.

However, this does not eliminate the possibility that "High Noon Tex" was being re-printed on that occasion.

So, either there's an earlier printing of "Tex", or Marvel's assertion is incorrect. In any case, Hasbro (owner of the Transformers license) has not seen fit to argue the point in court — even in light of the publication of stories featuring the 21st century Death's Head.

Barring actual, hard evidence to the contrary, then, comicbookdb.com will take the position that Death's Head actually made his first appearance in The Transformers (UK).
Update on first appearance direct from the writer. The character first appeared in Transformers but was going to be killed off in #120. But after seeing Geoff Seniors art Simon Furman rewrote the stories & then had the character turn up in soem more stories. Marvel UK then came up with a plan to make US size comics & needed some characters for the comics. They picked Death's Head so needed to get him out of Transformers & set him up as Marvel - re the High Noon Tex story.